Robby McQueen

Lucia Elden
ENG 111
9-14-15

Community: The Real Struggle

Community in my own words is people sharing the same common goal
but have challenges they come to face. Challenges that people face can be
from being oppressed, having mistaken (which are challenges), and having
struggle in their own life to become a better person. People are in a
community in their own way. For example, people might be in huge
communities like the town or city or people might be in a smaller community
like the chess team. Each of these communities have their problems they
face.
Community is people going through struggle to reach a goal because
of challenge they face. Paulo Freire a Brazilian philosopher says that
Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the
powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. (32) To me
this is saying that to be neutral or not caring will not make you better, it will
make you worse and to be on the powerful side you are putting in effort to
be in that powerful community. This relates to how a challenging

community is very important because to be neutral in any situation you are

not living up to your full potential and not creating challenge for yourself in
your community. One of Paulo Freire Quotes from the Pedagogy of the
oppressed says, The oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend
themselves to become oppressors. (32) This relates to our time and society
because people are tending to become this in our generation and this is bad
for society. Society needs to be challenged to become better than who we
are because if we do not then we will not solve the problems that are in the
future that has not been discovered yet. This is challenged in the community
because in Paulo Freire quote he says, the oppressed, which it means
people who suffer from harsh and cruel punishment. Then he said that we
are not striving to become better in ourselves rather we are just going with
the flow. He quotes this when he says Tend themselves to become
oppressors. People in communities need to realize that people are not going
to do everything for you. The person that who you are needs to be the best
person you can be. The challenge that Paulo Freire is talking about in this
quote is that the people who are getting harmed are not striving to challenge
themselves to make the world better, instead they are going with the flow
and becoming people who are harming them in the first place (the
oppressors). As an oppressor, people are not challenging themselves to
make a better place which is not putting our todays world in advancement
as it should be. Paulo Freire is supporting my ideas of community because
he talks about the struggles of people being in the community.

Challenge is developed in a community is how people learn. People in

the present time are taught from textbook to textbook and from test to test.
Which seems like that would be a challenging community but it is not.
Community has to be challenged to learn and to be developed on their own.
Barry Alford, an English Professor at Mid-Michigan Community College, wrote
an article called Freirean Voices, Student Choices. This talks about when
instructors teach from their point of view on how people learn, not on how
other people learn. He talks about how Professors give articles to read to
teach them different viewpoints on the way we are taught but he adds on
that the teachers need to step back and allow the students to teach
themselves on the material they are on because they are the future
generation (279) Barry Alfords viewpoint on how students should be taught
is related to a challenge in a community because the struggle the students
will have and the benefit of being taught this way is why the community is a
whole. His Quote about how students are being taught The most concrete
way I know of making this move is to engage my students, and have them
engage each other, in the formation of topics and strategies in the
classroom. (280) Barry Alfords and Paulo Freire have the same viewpoints
on how students should get taught. Paolo Freire said that,
Yet only through communication can human life hold meaning. The
teacher's thinking is authenticated only by the authenticity of the
students' thinking. The teacher cannot think for her students, nor can
she impose her thought on them. Authentic thinking, thinking that is

concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation,
but only in communication. If it is true that thought has meaning only
when generated by action upon the world, the subordination of
students to teachers becomes impossible. (45)

Freire is trying to convey that teachers that teach in a way that they give
lectures and go thru the textbook but the only way for students to actually
learn is about communication with the students and the teachers. Teachers
need to communicate with the students. Barry Alford and Paulo Freire have
the same beliefs on how people should be taught they both think that it is
important to have communication with the students and allow the students
to be able to teach themselves. I believe that they both would say the same
things about community. They would say that challenge in a community is
good because people would be going thru it by themselves. If people do not
take action on teaching themselves then how are we going to survive
generations to generations?
When people get challenged to become a part of a community or be
challenged in one. Paulo Freire a Brazilian educator and philosopher writes a
piece called the Pedagogy of freedom in which he says, If I am a pure
product of genetic, cultural, or class determination, I have no responsibility
for my action in the world and, therefore, it is not possible for me to speak of
ethics. Of course, this assumption of responsibility does not mean that we

are not conditioned genetically, culturally, and socially. It means that we

know ourselves to be conditioned but not determined.(42) I believe that
Paulo Freires quote is saying that people who are free will be in whatever
they want and will do what they want and people that go with the flow and
are not their own individual and they will become something they are not.
People in the world of not being free we will not be responsible to speak of
our own thoughts we will not be determined if we are not free of that. This
brings up on how we choose to live in our communities that we are in. If
people are being their self in the community then it will be harder for them
to fit in and that represents challenge. People like Freire agree that freedom
in communities and choosing whether to do what they want to do in their life
is based on a person's own free will in their community.
People in a sub community like football have a lot of challenges that
they face. As a football player, the team has a lot of challenges that they are
faced with each day. People in football are challenged to be the best they can
be for the team, and also the team as a whole has to face diversity and
punch it in the mouth. On the football team, team players are brought
together because of struggles and the challenge they face. As Paulo Freire
said in the Pedagogy of Oppressed, The trust of the people in the leaders
reflects the confidence of the leaders in the people.(45) When Freire said
this he is trying to say what our coaches say to us, If the players work hard
and bond together the players will succeed. This relates to how community
works because in order for people to succeed in their community they will

have to work hard and have struggle that they have to overcome. When it
comes to struggle in community and in football people have struggles as a
team/community and as a single person. An American scholar, Mike Rose,
has wrote a piece called The Politics of Remediation which talks about
students in the struggle in writing. Mike Rose would talk about how mistakes
our better to learn and understand what happened that rather to judge what
happens and not look back on it (23). For example, football players also have
to be their own person in this sport and make decisions that are not always
the right one because they have to learn from their mistake.
The way we are developing is all based on the world we live in. In a
community, people need challenge in their life to become better community
as whole and as just one person. This means that struggle and mistakes are
very beneficial if people learn from what they did. Paulo Freire, Barry Alford,
and Mike Rose all believe in challenge in community. Mike Rose believed in
how mistakes are not made just to be overlooked, they are made to learn
from. Barry Alford and Paulo Freire did not necessarily believe in the
mistakes aspect but as in freedom and how people need to have challenge
in education otherwise people will not learn on their own. Football players
can relate to this because as being in a good football team you need
challenge that the football team overcomes. Challenge in a community will
not seem like the best at first. But in the end of it all, Challenge will be the
reason that the world will survive!

Sources
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the oppressed. [New York]: Herder and Herder,
1970. (32)
Freire, Paulo. Cultural action for freedom Penguin education.
Harmondsworth,: Penguin, 1972. (42,45)

Mike Rose - Lives on the Boundary : A Moving Account of the Struggles and
Achievements of America's Education. (23)